Hebrews 3:7
Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith: Today if you shall hear his voice,
Open Hebrews 3:7 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quapropter sicut dicit Spiritus Sanctus : Hodie si vocem ejus audieritis,
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- Διό, καθὼς λέγει τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον· Σήμερον ἐὰν τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ ἀκούσητε,
The Fathers on this verse
St Gregory Thaumaturgus A Sectional Confession of Faith, Section XXIII
Seest thou that the Spirit is inseparable from the divinity? And no one with pious apprehensions could fancy that He is a creature. Moreover, in the Epistle to the Hebrews he writes again thus: “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost?” And again he says in the same epistle: “Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. …
St Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius, He proceeds to discuss the views held by Eunomius, and by the Church, touching the Holy Spirit; and to show that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not three Gods, but one God. He also discusses different senses of “Subjection,” and therein shows that the subjection of all things to the Son is the same as the subjection of the Son to the Father
Thus much with regard to his profanity towards the Son. Now let us see what he says about the Holy Spirit. “After Him, we believe,” he says, “on the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth.” I think it will be plain to all who come across this passage what object he has in view in thus perverting the declaration of the faith delivered to us by the Lord, in his statements concerning the Son and the Father. Though this absurdity has already been exposed, I will nevertheless endeavour, in few words, to make plain the aim of his knavery. …
St Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius, Section 1
Then how will you make it fit with what follows? For when Paul says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit,” he goes on to say, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” If then “the Lord is the Spirit,” and “Spirit” means “essence,” what are we to understand by “the essence of the essence”? He speaks again of another Spirit of the Lord Who is the Spirit, that is to say, according to your interpretation, of another essence . Therefore in your view the Apostle, when he writes expressly of “the Lord the Spirit,” and of “the Spirit of the Lord,” means nothing else than an essence of an essence. Well, let Eunomius make what he likes of that which is written; what we understand of the matter is as follows. The Scripture, “given by inspiration of God,” as the Apostle calls it, is the Scripture of the Holy Spirit, and its intention is the profit of men. …
St Cyril of Jerusalem Continuation of the Discourse on the Holy Ghost
33. And that the Holy Ghost subsists, and lives, and speaks, and foretells, I have often said in what goes before, and Paul writes it plainly to Timothy: Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in later times some shall depart from the faith , which we see in the divisions not only of former times but also of our own; so motley and diversified are the errors of the heretics. And again the same Paul says, Which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His Holy Apostles and Prophets in the Spirit . And again, Wherefore, as saith the Holy Ghost ; and again, The Holy Ghost also witnesseth to us . And again he calls unto the soldiers of righteousness, saying, And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, with all prayer and supplication . …
St Ambrose On the Holy Spirit, Chapter VIII. The aforesaid unity is proved hereby, that as the Father is said to be grieved and tempted, so too the Son. The Son was also tempted in the wilderness, where a figure of the cross was set up in the brazen serpent: but the Apostle says that the Spirit also was there tempted. St. Ambrose infers from this that the Israelites were guided into the promised land by the same Spirit, and that His will and power are one with those of the Father and the Son
51. Therefore when you find in the book of Moses, that the Lord being tempted sent serpents on the people of the Jews, it is necessary that you either confess the Unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Divine Majesty, or certainly when the writing of the Apostle says that the Spirit was tempted, it undoubtedly pointed out the Spirit by the name of Lord. But the Apostle writing to the Hebrews says that the Spirit was tempted, for you find this: “Wherefore the Holy Ghost saith this: Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, like as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works. Forty years was I near to this generation and said: They do alway err in their heart; but they did not know My ways, as I sware in My wrath, If they shall enter into My rest.”
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).